


You'll Have This Place to Call Home

by Emotionally Compromised Robots (CDRomelle)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Middle Ages, Modern Day, discussion of catholicism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CDRomelle/pseuds/Emotionally%20Compromised%20Robots
Summary: Collection of ficlets from my Tumblr.1.Nicky tried to wait it out, the riot of contradictions in his head, to wait for his true feelings to float to the surface, or at least for the waters to still. He waited. Joe waited with him.2.The bed was going to be a problem.3. "Babe?" "Babe!" "Babe."
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 1
Kudos: 51





	1. Processing the Pope's Comments about Same-Sex Marriage

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was written in response to the news that broke in late October 2020 that Pope Francis had spoken in favor of same-sex civil unions. I wrote this dialogue between Nicky and Joe to help process my feelings about it.

The couch beneath Nicky dipped as Joe sat down beside him, its sagging springs encouraging their thighs and shoulders to meet.

Nicky finished the sentence he was reading, then placed a bookmark in his book and closed it. The cover read _, The Force of Non-Violence: An Ethico-Political Bind_ by Judith Butler. He looked up.

Joe had his phone in his hand. He held it up for Nicky to see a web browser open to an Italian newspaper. The headline read: "Coppie gay, papa Francesco: 'Sì a legge sulle unioni civili.'"

"The Catholic pope endorsed same-sex civil unions," said Joe, also in Italian.

Nicky went very still. He looked at the phone, reading the headline again, but didn't try to scroll on the screen.

"Civil unions?" he said at last, quietly.

"Yes."

"Not marriage."

"No," said Joe, gently.

Nicky put his elbows on his knees, steepled his fingers in front of his face. Then he turned his head and looked at Joe. For a long, long moment, he only looked at Joe.

A faint curve appeared on his lips.

"How many bishops have already spoken out to condemn this?"

Joe exhaled, his eyebrows twisted up in sympathy. "More than a few."

Nicky huffed out a mirthless chuckle. He resumed staring.

Joe gazed back, his thumb tracing over the ring on his right hand. "I just thought you'd want to know."

"Yes." Nicky pushed off his knees to lean against the couch's back again, his shoulders bumping Joe's. "May I see the phone?"

Joe handed it over and Nicky read the article without blinking. He read it a second time.

There were many things he wanted to say. Few of them made sense on their own, much less in conjunction with each other. _It's not enough. It's more than I thought I would see._ _He_ _is a coward. He is myopic. He is trying._ _I feel sorry for him. I feel warmth toward him. I feel nothing at all._

Nicky tried to wait it out, the riot of contradictions in his head, to wait for his true feelings to float to the surface, or at least for the waters to still. He waited.

Joe waited with him.

Nicky thought about their wedding day, his and Joe's. On a beach in Malta many many years ago, their feet in the surf, Andromache and Quynh watching. The wind in his lungs was like the breath of life. Even the salt on his skin was holy, that day.

Nicky put the phone down on Joe's thigh. He tipped his head back against Joe's shoulder and let out a deep, deep sigh.

"Oh, my heart." Joe pushed an arm between Nicky's back and the couch cushions so he could hold him. "I know. I know."


	2. Imagine Your OTP, They Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is in response to [this tumblr post.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/04b7d4070a4959e065936e811536cd01/8e5e970f227d45a6-dc/s500x750/1daef5c93b61d1b46fd35e0524bab0c5eb265364.jpg)
> 
> (Screencap of a Tweet that reads: "So my BOYFRIEND comes home last night absolutely smashed, gets undressed and then just stands there in my room. So I'm like are you coming to bed? and he goes "no thank you, I'm sure you're lovely but I have a girlfriend" and goes to sleep on the floor." Below it is a Tumblr comment "Imagine your OTP." So I did.)

**Barqah, Ifriqiyah, 1186 A.D. / 581 A.H.**

The bed was going to be a problem.

It wasn’t just that it was small, Yusuf told himself. He’d shared small beds before. It was that the bed was small and Yusuf would be sharing it with _him_. Nicolò the Frank, he of terrible opinions and annoyingly broad shoulders. The shoulders alone would take up more than half of this bed.

But they didn’t have the coin for better lodgings right now, so here Yusuf was, sitting on the edge of a small straw mattress in a dark, empty room.

Nicolò had been gone a few hours now; he’d slunk away after Yusuf had paid for their room, leaving Yusuf to eat a dinner of bread and mutton and dried apricots by himself.

Now it was well past sunset, and Yusuf wanted nothing more than to get as much sleep as he could before his unkillable traveling companion returned and hogged the mattress with those infuriating shoulders. But their room locked with a latch from the inside, so Yusuf had to stay up and wait to let Nicolò back in.

Damn this Frank.

Damn him and his long silences, his hollowed-out eyes and the infinitesimal smiles he gave when he spoke to a child or won an argument in Arabic. Damn his beard and the way he had held him the last time Yusuf had died, those spear-tip eyes the last and first thing Yusuf had seen as he bled out and reawoke under an orange sunset.

Yusuf had just resolved to stay up out of pure spite, to prove his own superior moral character (Nicolò could do with some reminding. They both could) when a knocking on the door jolted him awake.

Scrambling to sit up on the sagging mattress, Yusuf threw himself off the bed and unlatched the door.

It was the innkeeper, Fahad, with Nicolò behind him.

“Here’s your room,” Fahad said.

Nicolò nodded once and entered the room. Even in the dim light Yusuf could see Nicolò’s eyes were unfocused.

“Thank you,” said Yusuf. Fahad made a noise of acknowledgement, and closed the door.

“Thank you,” said Nicolò belatedly, his accent worse than usual.

Yusuf raised his eyebrows. “Have you been drinking?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Nicolò muttered, not exactly rudely, but not amicably either.

Yusuf sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed again.

“All right.”

He pretended not to watch, amused, as Nicolò fumbled in the dark with his keffiyeh, belt and boots. Then he just stood there, in his braies and shirt, arms hanging dumbly by his side.

Yusuf sighed. When would his suffering end?

“Are you coming to bed?” he said.

In the dark, Nicolò shook his head.

“What?”

Nicolò shook his head again. The room was small; they were only about three feet from each other. Yusuf thought he could smell the barley beer on Nicolò’s breath.

“Come on,” Yusuf said. “I’d rather just get this over with than wake up to you jostling me in the night.”

“Thank you, but…” Nicolò’s voice came out low and deep and scratchy; he cleared his throat and swallowed, the noise loud against the muffled sounds of the city beyond their walls.

Nicolò tried again: “I’m sure you are a pleasant lover—”

Yusuf choked on air; whatever he’d been expecting from his drunken companion, it wasn’t _that_ —

“—But my heart is elsewhere.”

“Your—”

But Nicolò had already dropped to the floor with a graceless thump.

“Nicolò,” Yusuf said, and stopped, totally at a loss for what else to say.

Nicolò only made a negative grunt through his nose as he pillowed his discarded clothes beneath his cheek, settled down against the floor and wrapped his arms around himself.

“Nicolò?” Yusuf tried again.

Nicolò had already started to snore.

Yusuf rolled over onto his back. He laughed once, an incredulous huff, then dragged a hand over his mouth and beard. The bed was suddenly spacious.

He spent most of the night staring at the ceiling.

—-

A piercing headache pulled Nicolò out of sleep inch by excruciating inch. By the time he was aware enough to realize why he was in pain the sun had risen, its merciless rays sharpened to arrow-points through the slats of the shutters.

“Good morning.”

Nicolò opened one eye.

Yusuf lay on a bed nearby, his hair a riot of curls and a small, smug smile on his face.

Nicolò groaned and buried his head in his cloak.

He ignored the creak of the bed, the soft shuffle of Yusuf moving, until he heard the door open.

“Where are you going?” is what he meant to say. It came out as a gravelly bleat.

“Shh,” said Yusuf, and left.

Nicolò lay there, too foggy to interrogate his own certainty of Yusuf’s return.

Still, it came as a surprise when a hand grabbed his shoulder and rolled him. He groaned, then choked as water spilled between his cracked lips.

Nicolò sat up, took the waterskin from Yusuf’s hands, and drained it.

Already he felt a bit better. Nicolò looked around to where Yusuf had sat down on the edge of the bed again, his eyebrows cocked.

“You’re welcome,” said Yusuf.

Nicolò exhaled, annoyed, and said, “Thank you for being more generous with the water than you were with the bed.”

Yusuf let out a single “Ha!” of laughter. “You refused the bed! You don’t remember?”

Nicolò cocked his head to the side, a look he hoped said, _stop bullshitting me._

“You did.”

“Why would I do that?”

“How did you put it? Ah yes. ‘I cannot _sleep with you_ because my heart belongs to another.’”

Nicolò could feel the air turn to ash in his lungs. He kept his face steady. With all the control he possessed, he raised an eyebrow.

Yusuf lifted his hands. “That’s what you said! You were very polite about it, though. Almost like you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Then you lay down on the floor and went right to sleep.”

They stared at each other. Nicolò impassive, Yusuf with that little lilting smirk.

Through the numbness in Nicolò’s chest lanced a sudden wild urge to laugh, spurred on by the smile in those dark, liquid, magnetic eyes.

He looked away.

“We should get going.”

“Sure,” said Yusuf, too easily. They gathered their things in silence.

Nicolò was just refastening his cloak when Yusuf hit him with:

“It’s nice to know you think I would be a pleasant lover.”

Nicolò’s head shot up. “Liar.”

“That’s what you said.”

“I did not.”

Yusuf snorted. “Yeah, you must be right. Doesn’t sound like you at all.”

And he left the inn room, leaving Nicolò staring in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at EmotionallyCompromisedRobots. Send me more prompts!


	3. "Babe."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky and Joe review the English language's selection of pet names and endearments.

_Sometime after the team switched to American English as their main language:_

"Joe," Nicky calls from the kitchen.

"Yeah, babe?" Joe responds from the living room, where he's sitting on an old leather armchair with his sketchbook on his lap.

"The cake is done—"

"Got it." Joe ambles into the kitchen, takes the bag of icing Nicky holds out to him, and gets to work embellishing the cake with pink curlicues. Nicky, hands on hips, watches with the intensity of a doctor watching a difficult surgery.

Joe finishes a curlicue, pokes out his tongue. Starts another one. Says, "'Hey, _Joe_?' 'Yes, _babe_?' 'Checking in, Joe.' 'I'm here, _my heart_.' 'Take your clothes off, Joe.' 'I'd love to, _sexy_.'"

He finishes another whirl of icing and looks up at Nicky through his lashes.

Nicky's expression hasn't changed, save for one slightly cocked eyebrow.

"Is that not your name now?"

Joe stands up straight. Puts down the icing. Shuffles just a little closer than necessary. "It is."

"Then... what is the problem, Joe."

They are nose to nose now. Joe smirks. "Oh, nothing... sweetheart."

Nicky, stone-faced, says, "Good."

"You used to call me _amore mio, habibi, plus cher,_ " Joe pouts. " _Tesoro, Hayati_..."

"I still so."

"Not when we speak English."

Nicky frowns. It can't disguise the twinkle in his eye. "Endearments in English don't roll off the tongue. 'Darling,' 'Sugar,' 'Kitten,'" he says in an exaggerated American accent, making the R's as flat as possible and swallowing the 't' in 'kitten' so it sounds like _ki'uhn_. "And I can never remember which vegetables to say. Tomato? My little tomato?"

Joe leans further in, so their noses brush together. In a soft, sensual voice, he whispers, "Pumpkin."

Nicky pushes out his lower lip, still otherwise stone-faced. "I knew it was a New-World crop."

Joe's attempted smoulder dissolves into a giggle. "Fair enough."

"I'm glad you agree," Nicky deadpans. His face softens and he kisses Joe's nose.

Joe returns the kiss on Nicky's lips, deepening it just a little, just a flick of tongue across teeth.

"'Babe' is a pretty good one," he whispers, sensual and smouldering again despite the sparkle in his eye. He presses his lips together and pronounces: "Babe."

Nicky mimics his mouth movements. "Babe."

"Babe," says Joe again, with an even more plosive sound.

"Babe," Nicky repeats.

"Babe."

"Babe."

"Babe!"

"Babe?"

Joe leans in close again and whispers against Nicky's lips, "...Babe."

Nicky pulls his head back, puts his hands on Joe's upper arms, and fixes him with the full intensity of his stare. "Babe."

A beat.

Then Joe dissolves in giggles again, a soft blush stealing into his cheeks.

"You like that?" says Nicky, tilting his head to catch every detail of Joe's expression.

"Yeah," Joe chuckles. "Yeah, I do."

"Okay," Nicky nods, mock-thoughtful, eyes dancing. "Okay, babe."

Joe smiles, leans in for another kiss. "Thanks, babe." Then he turns to leave the kitchen.

"Hey, babe?" Nicky says.

Joe looks back.

"You didn't finish icing the cake."

Joe makes a 'you-got-me' face. "Whoops." He comes back and picks up the set-aside icing bag. "Do you have any other colors?"

"What colors do you want?"

"Hm." Joe scratches his beard as he assesses the cake. "A carnelian? Maybe a goldenrod?"

Nicky nods, his expression serious and focused again. "Coming right up, babe."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also posted to my Tumblr at [EmotionallyCompromisedRobots](https://emotionallycompromisedrobots.tumblr.com/post/638696740347838464/sometime-after-the-team-switched-to-american)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at EmotionallyCompromisedRobots
> 
> Fic title from "Godspeed" by Frank Ocean, which is the song Nile listens to at the army base in Afghanistan to calm herself down. The Old Guard has been a place for me to call home since July and I'm so grateful to it.


End file.
